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Re: Pronunciation guides for non-linguists

From:Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>
Date:Monday, December 12, 2005, 20:37
Hi!

Andreas Johansson <andjo@...> writes:
> Quoting Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>: > >... > > Same for German: [A] is not used is many dialects. It is tradition to > > write [A:] vs. [a], > > It is? My textbooks have without exception written [a:] vs [a], and includes one > written by Germans for Germans.
I think it is. But I admit that I've never actually seen [a_"] written for German /a/, but only [a], just as you describe. Probably this is to not confuse readers since [a_"] looks like [ä] in IPA, which looks like {ä} and this is [E], which would be misleading. But comparing /a/ vs. /A/ in langs or dialects that distinguish, e.g. Dutch or Swiss German or Hamburgian, their /a/ is consistently more fronted and their /A/ is consintently more backed. So when being very precise, I'd annotate [a_"] for Standard Modern German. Hmm, one would not write [a_"] in the standard five vowel system /a e i o u/ either, would one? The default seems to be to just write [a], although if there's only one open vowel, I'd strongly expect it to be central. This is in the same way I'd expect the /e/ and /o/ to be real mid vowels in such a three-heights system, while in a four-heights system like German, I'd expect them to be really mid-open vs. mid-close. Still you typically write [e] vs. [o] (e.g. Italian or Spanish). The precise values will of course depend on language, dialect and speaker. Anyway, I think one gets in trouble when starting to talk about [e] vs. [E] vs. [&] vs. [a] vs. [a_"] vs. [A]. I doubt these are so well-defined that no overlap occurs for at least one pair of these for different speakers (of different languages). I think for me, [a] vs. [&] is the most difficult to distinguish (but not [a_"] vs. [&]).
> > but most dialects I a aware of have a centralised > > [a_"] (+- length) for both. Anyway, there's [A:] vs. [a] in northern > > dialect, and probably others. So it'd not be clear what you mean from > > the German entry alone, either. > > Well, the "official" pronunciation, as set out in Duden, has [a:].
Ah! Hmm, my Duden from 1926 does not give any pronunciation. But my Langenscheidt dictionaries that give German pronunciation still use [A:] vs. [a] (although they probably mean /A:/ vs. /a/). It's not bad, you know, as there are dialects that distinguish.
> In fact, my copy of Duden takes the trouble to contrast the [a:] of > "Bahn" with the [A:] of English loans like "Hardware". Presumably > this is what a guide like Gary's would be refering to. > > FWIW, my German teachers made a point of making us pronounce /a:/ as [a:] > instead of [A:] (the value of Swedish /a:/).
Yes, seems logical. [a] is then probably used as the default symbol if there's only one open vowel, as mentioned above. **Henrik